Paper Title
The Impact of Consumer Ethnocentrism in an Emergent Market
Abstract
In the era of globalization, consumers are being more exposed than ever before to varieties of foreign products from other countries. International marketers become more concerned to understand consumer attitudes toward foreign products before they make their market strategies. Consumer ethnocentrism is an important factor in making the consumers adversely evaluate foreign products. This study aims to develop a model that can be used to assess the impact of consumer ethnocentrism and its antecedents on consumer purchase intention toward foreign products in an emergent market. The findings showed that the level of consumer ethnocentrism in Saudi Arabia is relatively low. The hypothesis- testing results revealed that consumer ethnocentrism did not have significant influence on consumer purchase intention toward foreign products. Additionally, the findings showed that consumer ethnocentrism is affected by cultural openness, conservatism and moral idealism but was not influenced by moral relativism. Attitude was found to have a significant impact on consumer purchase intention toward foreign products. The empirical results showed that cultural similarity moderates the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention toward foreign products. In contrast, none of the demographic variables had a moderating effect on the research’s model hypotheses.